A place to discuss challenges in the game, Do you have an excellent challenge you want to promote? Wondering how on earth (or jupiter) anyone could beat a particular challenge? Post all your challenge-game related questions and answers here...

First (see what I did there) I thought we should have a thread for discussing challenges we're stuck on. Dealing with an unbeatable retaliation? Do tell! I'm sure we can come up with an answer. Stuck on Battle Group D "Fog Devils" lol? We've got the solution. Post the battle ID of any puzzlers you come across so we can all give it a go!

The Lollipop Guild fleet is ridiculous, but like all of the most dangerous fleets it is Yootani (try fighting the Bugzilla fleet, another Yootani base), which just proves, I think, how overpowered and unbalanced the speed of the Yootani strike craft engines. The Yootani are really the only race that can effectively use fighters and gunships. When they ARE effective, fighters are ridiculously devastating. When they're not, they're next to useless. There really seems to be no middle ground, and that sharp divide is entirely predicated on speed.

I haven't figured out a way to beat the Lollipop Guild yet, either, if it's any comfort. It's mortifying, because they look so silly. They shouldn't be that dangerous.

Just to add one last thought re: strike craft balance, I actually think ALL races should be able to achieve Yootani fighter and gunship performance as a baseline. The unbalanced nature of strike craft exists because all other races' UNDERperform to the point of uselessness. Incidentally, so do Yootani if you use anything other than their race-specific engines. The baseline performance for all strike craft needs to be increased while the performance gap between Yootani and everything else needs to be lowered.

Until that time I think well-designed Yootani fleets will dominate the challenges. There just isn't an effective counter to the Lollipop Guild that even exists in the game right now outside another Yootani carrier fleet.